While hormonal therapy has been largely successful in the management of cancer patients in their early stages, the disease often progresses to metastatic disease which is hormone refractory and resistant to existing treatments. There is currently no optimal treatment that can slow down the disease progression in patients with metastatic disease.
For example, in patient with advanced prostate tumours, the current treatment include surgical treatments such as radical prostatectomy (RP), in which the prostate is completely removed (with or without nerve sparing techniques) and radiation or chemotherapy. Hormone therapy such as anti-androgen therapy is also used, alone or in conjunction with surgery or radiation. IFN-γ is an example of anti-tumour agent that has been used to treat cancers, including prostate and breast cancer but with limited success. Hence, while hormonal and surgical treatments are often effective for localized prostate cancer, advanced disease is often refractory to such treatments and thus, incurable.
Treatment of cancer can be more efficient if some early genetic markers are identified that allow adapted treatments that would allow the use of smaller amounts of chemotherapeutic agents and restoration of normal cell function. In addition, much effort has been expended to identify genetic determinants in patient outcomes, so as to improve clinical treatment decisions and for the design of therapeutic agents. To date, no known genetic markers have been reported, that could help determine the dose and clinical outcomes in patients receiving anti-cancer treatments.
Recent introduction of targeted therapy and increasing numbers of available chemotherapeutic regimens, such as platinum and derivatives, taxanes and gemcitabine, do not effectively cure cancer patients, with varied response towards treatment and occurrence of drug toxicity. In addition, prognosis remains dismal in advanced cancer patients albeit careful evaluation of clinico-pathological factors that determine patient response to therapy, such as tumor, nodes and metastasis (TNM) staging, performance status, gender and weight loss.
Accordingly, there is a need for developing new therapeutic targets and pharmaceutical compositions for the treatment of cancer patients.